by Sam Hatcher
Then came the unmistakable roar of the presidential limousine and its accompanying four-vehicle caravan of security agents.
It was Ike, dressed and ready to play.
Dealing with the Russians
“Gosh, I didn’t think you were going to make it. What in the hell’s going on?” George barked, observing that Ike was somewhat disconnected, a characteristic not often seen in this president, who always came to a golf game with a take-no-prisoner attitude.
KHRUSHCHEV’S VISIT
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A 1960 pow wow with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev turned into a testy challenge for President Eisenhower. Nearing the end of his term, he had been in direct conflict with the Soviet leader dating back to an incident on May 1. 1960 in which the Russkies shot down a U-2 spy plane conducting reconnaissance over the U.S.S.R.
In October 1960 Khrushchev made his second visit to the U.S. He had visited in 1959 before the U-2 incident on more agreeable terms when Eisenhower was pushing to have the dividing wall in Berlin removed. However, on this trip the predicament required much more time and finesse.
“It’s this raging cold war with the Russians,” Eisenhower began.
“I’m starting to believe Patton was right fifteen years ago when he said we ought to go on and take out those bastards (the Soviet Union) at the end of World War II.
“George, I’m telling you that damn Khrushchev is a piece of work. He’s coming here next week, and I’m not sure what to expect, but I’ve got to be prepared for anything,” said the frustrated president.
Gen. George Patton brought the Russians into Eisenhower’s wheelhouse near the end of World War II when the iconic military hero went on a public campaign advocating that the United States should launch war against the Communist country.
Patton pounded and pounded his message until Eisenhower, Patton’s commanding general, was forced to take action that resulted in reassigning the crusty general to an administrative post that for all practical purposes hushed his verbal rhetoric for good.
Ike’s mental meanderings about Patton also brushed up some memories that George retained in relationship to Patton’s stopover in a small town that held a special place in George’s heart.
George told the president about Patton’s appearance on the campus of his alma mater during the World War II maneuvers in Middle Tennessee.
Cumberland University, located thirty miles east of Nashville, served as the headquarters of the Second Army for a two-year period during the war, while eight-hundred thousand soldiers trained across Middle Tennessee before being deployed to the battlefields of Europe.
George shared with Ike the tales he had heard about Patton’s pearl-handle pistols and how the sound of his boots echoed rhythmically as he stomped through Cumberland’s Memorial Hall to the commander’s office, which previously had been the office of the school president.
Comedian Bob Hope and George Allen meet with Gen. George Patton
MIDDLE TENNESSEE MANEUVERS
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More than twenty Middle Tennessee counties served as a practicing ground for American troops preparing for war in Europe during World War II. For a short time Gen. George Patton’s command, the Second Army, claimed Cumberland University as its headquarers.
While he reminisced, George seemed to be a bit disoriented as his vivid recollections transported him to his college days and specifically to the one day that changed his life.
Taking practice swings
As the duo took a couple of practice swings on the tee, George attracted the concern of his playing partner.
Ike, observing the distant look in George’s eyes, was puzzled.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” the president quizzed his pal.
Both men stood braced, resting against their drivers. Henry, one of the older and more experienced African-American caddies at Burning Tree, also noticed the twosome’s apparent detachment with respect to today’s game.
Henry, who caddied for the pair routinely, knew there was never much money at stake in the round, but bragging rights for the winner proved better than gold.
On a normal day these two would be going at each other like Floyd Patterson and Ingemar Johansson in a world-class heavyweight bout thought the caddy. But today each man was mired in his own world.
Ike, nearing the end of eight years in office, was engulfed with thoughts of what comes next, and he was rankled over the immediate dealings with Khrushchev as well as wrestling with what to do about a vice president who desperately wanted to fill his place in the White House.
George, also nearing the sunset of a successful career in law, business, and national politics, was contemplating his future. Although his thoughts were somewhat more melancholy, as they raced back to a stage set in his life many years ago, and to an event that in some ways defined the course for his future.
George’s big day paled in comparison to the Normandy Invasion, the single greatest event in Eisenhower’s life.
When Eisenhower gave the orders for D-Day on June 6, 1944, he had no idea the successful invasion that saved the free world would set him up for a tenure in the White House ten years later.
George Allen’s day of glory rescued a school from death and prepared him for a life in a world dominated by business and politics.
Remembering relationships
Peering down Burning Tree’s first fairway, a stunning, tree-lined almost level 410-yard track, George could see considerable color in the surrounding foliage. Crimson, burnt orange and deep purple hues were framed by a scant collection of surviving green leaves that hung like parachute canopies along the edges of the fairway.
Before they struck their first shots, George began to regale the president about his days as a law student at Cumberland University. Ike knew a bit of George’s collegiate days but very little of the details.
The president did have other friends who had graduated from Cumberland. Many of them were lawyers and judges. Some were state governors and quite a few were members of the House or U.S. Senators.
Founded in 1842 in Lebanon, Tennessee, Cumberland University’s alumni roll includes fourteen state governors, more than eighty members of Congress, two U.S. Supreme Court Justices, three U.S. Ambassadors, and one Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who served FDR during World War II.
Although Eisenhower knew and shared an intimate relationship with former U.S. Senator and Kansas Governor Arthur Capper, who had graduated from Cumberland’s Law School, he knew perhaps better and had an even closer relationship with Secretary Hull, who had been an ally and a mentor to the general during much of the war.
Eisenhower gleaned much from Hull, the longest-serving Secretary of State. Appointed to the post by Roosevelt in 1933, he ably filled those responsibilities for nearly 12 years before leaving office in 1944. Hull, who graduated from Cumberland in 1891, was credited with creating the United Nations.
Hull and Eisenhower bonded tightly during the war, as Roosevelt, for the most part, entrusted the responsibility of overseeing the military stateside with Hull, while Eisenhower commanded the war efforts in Europe.
Secretary of State Cordell Hull
Through this friendship, Ike gained considerable familiarity about Cumberland University. He often asked for advice from Hull, knowing that Hull would apply the wisdom of a rural Tennessee country boy when judging people, whether it be officers under Eisenhower’s command, the leaders of enemy troops, or, as it had been in more recent years, the Democrats and Republicans ruling Capitol Hill.
IKE’S CUMBERLAND TIES
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Besides Gen. Patton, Secretary Hull and George Allen, President Eisenhower shared a number of other friendships, political alliances, and acquaintances with Cumberland University connections.
The president knew many Cumberland alumni who served in Congress while he was president. In fact, Cumberland, as late as the mid-1970s, was second only to Harvard University as having the most alumni as sitting members of Congress.<
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One other notable Tennessee connection, although he did not attend Cumberland University, was Sen. Albert Gore, Sr., a Democrat from Carthage, Tennessee, a rural community about 20 miles from the Cumberland campus. Gore and Eisenhower put political differences aside to develop a close friendship, and in 1956 passed legislation creating the nation’s interstate highway system.
Ike’s on the first tee
Ike teed off first, rapping the ball two-hundred-and-ten yards down the heart of the fairway.
George waited to see if Ike would hit a second ball, so that he could select the better of the two drives to play. That was Ike’s standard operation of procedure on the first tee, and who would argue with him. After all he was the president and leader of the free world.
But today, to George’s surprise, Ike decided not to put another ball in play. He would go with his first shot as it was in good shape resting in the fairway.
In a gesture of fair play Ike advised George that he would keep the first drive but would allow George to hit a mulligan if his first shot wasn’t acceptable.
Ike, bragging to George about the quality of his tee shot, which had landed squarely in the heart of the fairway and then rolled another 30 yards, attempted to fuel the emotions of the game. When he and George played they were like two kids at a sixth-grade school recess. They continually taunted and badgered one another until the last putt drained into the cup on 18, even keeping up their good-natured needling until sipping their first drink at Burning Tree’s 19th-hole bar.
But today was different.
Ike soon forgot his conflict with the Russian leader and put aside his regard for whether or not Nixon would show well in the debate that night against Kennedy.
George, on the other hand, could not escape his past. His mind continued to reel over that fateful day in 1916.
Consternation began to set in with Ike, who was somewhat disappointed that his bantering could not provoke George’s wrath as it typically did with the old frat boy who held a vocabulary full of expletives at the tip of his tongue. The president recognized that his golf buddy had his mind on something miles away.
Concerned, Ike gently quizzed his pal how things were going and why his emotions seemed out of sorts.
Fumbling through his pocket in search for a tee, George never looked up nor did he respond.
Pressing harder, the president attempted to persuade George to open up and spill his guts, thinking, perhaps, he could listen and share some sound advice.
ALLEN MEETS EISEHHOWER
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George Allen met Dwight Eisenhower when he was making trips to Europe in the 1940s as a representative of the Red Cross. He accepted a presidential appointment as a director of the War Damage Corporation, a government agency created as the result of World War II to provide insurance against war-related damages to private property held by Americans. In 1944, he served President Harry Truman as campaign manager when Truman was on the ticket as a vice presidential candidate.
In 1946 Allen became director of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and later that year was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. Despite a close relationship with Eisenhower, a Republican, Allen held key leadership posts in the National Democratic Party. For several years he was a major power broker in Washington because of the relationships he held not only with presidents but with members of Congress and the judiciary.
Still silent, George took two practice swings, addressed the ball and stopped. He looked back over his shoulder to see Ike glaring at him in what appeared to be a stare-down.
George knew he owed the president an explanation.
He paused, turned his attention back to the tiny white ball in front of him and swung as hard as he could. Never watching the flight of the ball, he turned to his friend and began, “Well, I tell you, Ike. It was a day very much like this.”
Cumberland abandons once prominent football program
From one hole to the next, between drives, chips and putts, George described in intimate detail the historic football game that was played by one team to save its school from bankruptcy and by the other to preserve what it believed to be its pathway to a national collegiate football championship (and its coach’s personal vendetta).
On October 7, 1916, tiny Cumberland University played John Heisman’s top-ranked Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in Atlanta, Georgia, in what the sports media of the twenty-first century would have dubbed as “a must game” for each school.
George Allen, a law school student from Mississippi, was recognized at Cumberland as the big man on campus.
His Kappa Sigma fraternity looked to him for leadership as did the student body and, often, school administration officials.
If there was ever a most likely-to-succeed candidate who could not fail from the group of swell fellows at Cumberland, who enjoyed the frat parties and moot court appearances much more than the rigors and complications of studying contract law, George Allen was your man.
KAPPA SIGMA
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Founded in 1400 at the University of Bologna, the fraternity was introduced in the United States in 1869 by five students at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va. Kappa Sigma was chartered at Cumberland University in 1887 and at Georgia Tech in 1895.
He was the guy others sought to get them matched with a luscious coed, especially if the event might be a Saturday night party at Horn Springs, a favorite resort about six miles west of campus complete with a swimming pool, train stop, live bands in season, a dance floor and other recreational amenities. George also could clue younger law scholars as to what might be expected on Judge Nathan Green’s final examination.
Respected for his quick wit and intellectual capabilities, he was also prized by the administration and faculty. He offered a sound voice from the student side of things when decisions were being discussed that impacted campus life.
In 1916 Homer Allin Hill wore the cloak of Cumberland University president. He had filled the role abducted by Samuel Andrew Coile, who served an abbreviated term from 1914 to 1916.
These were trying times at Cumberland, as Hill wrestled with a major issue from behind his desk in the president’s office.
Cumberland had been identified in some academic circles as “the Harvard of the South.”
It had faced previous challenges, none bigger, than during the Civil War when on August, 29, 1864, Union troops torched the main building on the university’s original campus less than a mile east of the present campus along West Spring Street.
The original administration building housed the art, law and theology schools. The magnificent structure had been designed by renowned architect William Strickland, who also planned the Tennessee State Capitol and many other fine edifices across the South as well as signature works in Philadelphia and other cities in the Northeast.
Mounting financial issues were threatening to shutter the school in the spring of 1916, thus President Hill and board members came to the conclusion that Cumberland’s flailing football program must be shuttered.
It was not a decision made in haste but only after careful deliberation. The University’s leadership had decided there was but one option: it was fourth down and long and time to punt.
George and his peers were in an uproar about the school’s decision to disband the sport. After all, football had once been almost as important to the University as its nationally prominent law school.
In previous seasons leading up to this reckoning Cumberland teams had played national powerhouses such as Mississippi, Alabama, Tulane, Vanderbilt, South Carolina, Louisiana State, Tennessee, Georgia Tech and Clemson, among others.
The 1903 Cumberland football team claimed the Southern Conference championship after beating Tulane, LSU and Alabama over a five-day span and then tying Clemson in a postseason game arranged by Clemson coach John Heisman.
By 1916 Cumberland had posted a notable list of who’s who in college football ranks. To abort the gridiron program likely would s
end a strong message across the South that this exalted bastion of higher education was on the cusp of extinction.
Unlike contemporary college athletic programs where games are contracted as much as five years in advance, the plotting of schedules was not so disciplined during this era. Schools often added or dropped adversaries as the season approached, and on occasion would even drop a game while the season was in progress.
John Heisman standing on Bowman Field, in front of Tillman Hall, on the Clemson
University Campus.
It was not uncommon for a school to play two consecutive weekends, skip a couple of weeks, and then resume their schedule for another six weeks or so. Games might also be slated on consecutive days because of the limitations placed on travel.
MAJOR SOUTHERN CONFERENCE
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Established in 1894, the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association, (SIAA) was one of the earliest college athletic conferences.
At its height the organization had seventy-two members covering the Southeastern U.S. It dissolved in 1942.
Membership included all current schools in the Southeastern Conference with the exceptions of Arkansas, Missouri and Texas A&M. Also in its ranks were twelve current members of the Atlantic Coast Conference and the University of Texas.
Vanderbilt chemistry professor Dr. William Dudley founded the conference with luring Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Sewanee and Vanderbilt as charter members.